Combaticons: Cybertron
by ultharkitty
Summary: G1, Dysfunction AU. A set of one-shot ficlets about the Combaticons, set on and around Cybertron, before they got put in the Detention Centre. Content advice in chapter headers. For chronology of Dysfunction fics, see master list linked to from profile.
1. Not a Martyr, genfic

**Title:** Not Anyone's Martyr  
**Rating:** PG  
**Genre:** genfic  
**Characters:** Blast Off  
**Summary:** Set a long time before the war, when Blast Off was still neutral and a civilian. On what he thinks is a routine mission, Blast Off realises that something isn't right.  
**Notes:** Written for the prompt 'Always in history, it is the pioneers who suffer for ultimate victory'.

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They'd sold him out. Blast Off knew it before he hit atmosphere.

A new planet, a new threat. It was always the troublemakers sent to investigate, always the mechs whose failure to come home could never be counted as a loss.

It was stupid, really. The Institute didn't understand how valuable he was. He was the best of his build type, and his build type was the best of the deep space exploration models.

He'd never made much of it; eight hundred vorns spent seeking the quiet life, watching opportunity after opportunity for fame and fortune pass him by.

He'd watched the Academy grow and flourish, watched the Institute for Advanced Xenological Research spring up from a small group of inquisitive minds. He'd tagged along because of caste associations, because he – like them – had been built for the towers. Because the study of alien life meant considerable interstellar travel. It was the allure of an environment without other mechs; time away from Cybertron in the dramatic intensity of space, alone with his thoughts for longer than most of the aliens he went to study would live.

He spent so little time on Cybertron that the politics behind his mission objectives completely passed him by.

But, in the moment before he hit atmosphere on this lonely little planet in the heart of quadrant 56.904, everything came together with a sudden and stunning clarity.

They'd told him the planet was unoccupied – devoid of sentient life. His brief had been to scan for resources, to catalogue any flora and fauna not detectable in spectroscopy from the Institute's orbital and remote telescopes, and to collect soil samples.

That last point had puzzled him. Cybertronians weren't interested in soil, not even if it supported life. Ores and crystals, it went without saying. But soil?

It felt like an excuse.

It was.

The planet wasn't empty; the planet was occupied. What's more, the life forms were sentient and technologically advanced.

As he approached the atmosphere, he caught sight of indicators that his scanners had failed to reveal. A crust of habitation on the pocked surface of the largest moon; a ring of satellites – metallic and artificial – in geostationary orbit at the equator; a flickering haze of some material he couldn't identify rising up and around him, glittering and prismatic. Then he was through, passing into the upper layer of the atmosphere, and his sensors screamed with the intensity of new input.

Overwhelmed, he cancelled analysis of the new data. He focused instead on atmospheric entry, and the contemplation of that haze of ionised particles which somehow absorbed or deflected all signals coming from the planet itself.

Yes, they'd sold him out, the Institute's fundraisers, the weak-cored aft-kissers and politicised warmongers. This place was rich with energy, technology, ripe for plunder. It's dominant life form was a threat, and all the more so for being hidden from Cybertronian eyes.

Someone hailed him, an alien transmission in a code he couldn't begin to understand. Still, he knew what it would say: 'Turn back, or we will fire.'

Such a waste, he thought. Playing right into the Institute's hands, giving Iacon yet another justification for its expansionist off-world policies. All the aliens had to do was fire one shot. Even if it didn't hit him, the senate could vote to retaliate. All the better for Cybertron if it did hit him, if it killed him. He would be the Institute's martyr.

He altered his trajectory, scanning for the source of the transmissions. Diverting power to his lasers, he had a moment to regret that the Cybertronian right to bear arms only allowed him civilian grade weapons. But the regret soon evaporated in the slow burn of his anger.

He wasn't about to be anyone's martyr.


	2. Friends in Other Places, cracky genfic

**Title:** Friends in Other Places  
**Genre:** genfic, or possibly crime caper  
**Rating:** PG  
**Warnings:** none  
**Characters and/or pairings:** Swindle, OCs, cameo by Blast Off, mention of Smokescreen  
**Summary:** In a crowded prison cell in Iacon, Swindle regrets getting involved with Smokescreen.

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* * *

This was the pit.

Swindle sat on the bunk, elbows on his knees, and tried not to let his tyres bump against anyone else. He tried not to vent either, his olfactory sensors already overwhelmed by the stink of old oil and sour joint lubricant. He shouldn't be here. And he wouldn't be if it wasn't for that no-good idiot Autobot wannabe he had, for some stupid reason, got himself involved with.

"Shove up, runt." A mech the size and approximate shape of the kind of asteroid that caused mass extinctions loomed over him. It sneered.

Swindle winced and edged towards the wall. If only there wasn't a femme in the way. And if only she wasn't the kind of femme who'd likely rip his arms off if he so much as looked at her. Yeah, this really wasn't his kind of place.

He glanced longingly at the exit. Energon bars sizzled, the only barrier between him and freedom.

The asteroid-mech squeezed in beside him, lumpy grey hips scraping against Swindle's nice new paintjob.

He sighed. Smokescreen was a moron. Worse than that, he was an amiable, helpful, happy moron with advanced social skills and really good taste in high grade. He was fun to be around. He was good at concocting plans, and – usually – really good at carrying them out. Just not this time.

No. This time, he'd slagged up something chronic. And, as these things went, the mech with the good rep and the high class friends got off with a fine and a slap on the aft while Swindle was left to rust in some pit-forsaken Iacon jail.

They wouldn't even deport him to Kaon. Probably because they know who _his_ friends were.

He cleared his cache for the fifteenth time that joor and glanced around. There had to be someone here he could strike up a conversation with. Someone who could help relieve the boredom. Who could, potentially, become an ally. Maybe a customer. Maybe a friend.

He caught a few optics, but a flash of his open, hopeful smile only earned him glowering, resentful looks. Swindle decided he didn't like Iacon.

"Back from the bars!"

Another immense mech appeared, this time in official livery, and on the other side of the cell door. There was a general crushing shuffle, as the mechs closest to the bars – and thus to a supply of (comparatively) clean, fresh air – moved back.

Swindle's view was cut off by a small red aft and the curve of a wing. In any other circumstance, he might not complain, but here and now it was damned annoying.

"Prisoner 25468736, step forward."

A little light began to flash in his HUD. 25468736, that was him. Oh slag.

Swindle eased himself off his seat, clenching his denta against the squeal of his hips as he tugged himself out from the gap between the massive femme and Asteroid Mech.

"Prisoner 25468736, now!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Swindle cried. Couldn't he see it was tighter than a pack of sharkticons in here? Probably could and he didn't care, cold-cored bastard. Swindle's engine stuttered, his actuator giving a weird little twinge. It didn't bode well that the trial was so soon. Where the slag was his legal team?

The guard grunted and switched off the bars. Twin blasters on his shoulders whined, caution against anyone getting the wrong idea.

Swindle stepped through, hearing the hiss of reactivation, but not wanting to look back.

"This way."

He followed the guard, head down, optics focused on the backs of the guard's massive pedes. He had leg mounted cannons as well, and a sonic displacer rifle in a holster at his hip. No wonder they hadn't bothered to cuff him, Swindle thought. The guard was a walking deterrent.

"Through here."

Down another corridor and into a small, boxy room. No window, just an air vent leading up to slag knew where.

"Sign this."

Swindle stared. It was his stuff. On the table. His pistol, his data pad, all the contents of his drawers and compartments he'd been forced to hand over when they first brought him here. All of it, and he could have it back.

"Sentence got commuted," the guard said. "All you got is a fine, and someone paid it."

When Swindle continued to stare, the guard leant down to his level, his tiny orange optics blazing.

"Obviously," he said, "you got friends. Personally, I can't see why, but my shift lets up as soon as I get your stupid aft out of here, so sign the fraggin' form and we can all go home."

Outside, the air was crisp, the last damp trace of acid rain a gleaming film over roads and buildings. Swindle was caught between a kind of flighty ecstasy, and the type of dread that always cropped up when he owed someone big time and had no idea who it was.

"You need a lift?"

He jumped, his engine coughing, then laughed as the shadows congealed in a recess between buildings, revealing the rain-slick purple and brown of Onslaught's Head of Logistics.

Well, that answered that one.

Swindle grinned. "Sure thing."


	3. Sure, you got it in there, crack

**Title:** Sure, you got it in there…

**Continuity:** G1 cartoon, Dysfunction AU

**Rating:** U/K

**Warnings:** None!

**Disclaimer:** Just playing in the sandpit, at the U-rated end for a change

**Characters and/or pairings:** Swindle, Vortex, Blast Off

**Prompt:** "Sure, you got it in, but are you going to be able to get it out again?"

**Summary:** Yet another example of not-teamwork from the Combaticons. This one's set back on Cybertron, before the war.

* * *

"Sure, you got it in there." Vortex leant against the wall, knee crooked and arms crossed. He was grinning under that mask, Swindle was sure of it. "But are you going to be able to get it out again?"

"Course I am," Swindle huffed. It wasn't as though the package was heavy. It was just large. And delicate, and unwieldy. And, for some reason Swindle couldn't quite fathom, it was wedged tight in Blast Off's cargo bay door. He _had_ got it in there…

"Uh…" It was a quiet noise, a gentle, unobtrusive note of protest, and it issued from the shuttle stuck in alt mode in the centre of the loading bay. "Do you think you could hurry it up a little?"

Vortex snickered.

"Shut up," Swindle snapped. He took a few steps back and bit his lip. "You could give me a hand?" he hazarded.

The copter shook his head.

Swindle sighed; why did things always have to be so difficult?


	4. Testing, cracky genfic

**Title:** Testing

**Continuity:** G1, Dysfunction AU

**Rating:** PG-13

**Genre:** cracky genfic

**Content advice:** one big explosion, implied slash, gun kink of a kind

**Characters:** Blast Off and Brawl, implied off-screen Vortex/Blast Off

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Orbit, Blast Off mused, was one of his favourite places.

The planet didn't matter, it was the distance that counted. In space, it was often hard to comprehend how far away he was from any particular celestial body, but in orbit he had the ground right there, giving him an immediate, visual understanding that was so much more immediate than the clinical data collected by his other sensors.

It was pleasing to see how much space there was between himself and the nearest sentient being.

The tank, he decided, didn't count.

Brawl was glued to the window in his cargo hold. Not literally, thank Sigma, but he might as well have been, the way he pressed himself against the toughened crystal. His orange visor gleamed brightly, and he bounced constantly, brimming with the kind of energy Blast Off would be very glad to get as far away from himself as possible.

The door to the flight deck was, of course, locked.

"You gonna do it yet!" Brawl yelled. He had a drill sergeant's voice, or what Blast Off thought of as a drill sergeant's voice, having managed to avoid military service. Altogether too loud, Brawl couldn't say anything without shouting. It was wearing, to say the least.

"Soon," Blast Off replied. He diverted power to his cannons. Oh, they were glorious. He'd never appreciated the joy of really big guns before working for Onslaught, but his recent upgrade to military issue integrated weapons had given him a whole new perspective on things.

It didn't hurt that the copter found them attractive.

"How about now!" Brawl bounced. "Frag, I wanna see this! This is gonna be so awesome!"

"Indeed," Blast Off replied, then wondered why he bothered. Brawl had been sent to observe. A true-to-the-core military mech, the tank knew two things: protocol and explosions. Or so Onslaught had said. Apparently, Brawl, Onslaught and Vortex went way back. This explained why Brawl was trusted with anything more than waking himself up at the beginning of his shift cycle, and why Vortex didn't put him in repair bay anywhere near as often as he deserved.

It didn't mean that Blast Off had to like him. But it did mean that a modicum of deference was politic, even if he couldn't help the patronising tone of some of his responses.

"You got 'em aimed yet?" Brawl said. "You know you gotta take the rolly bit into considerwhatsit when you do the sums and stuff yeah?"

"Yes," Blast Off replied. "I have indeed taken the rotation of the planet into consideration. Cannons are locked on coordinates latitude 10.8…" he paused, doing something akin to recalibrating his worldview. "Those big mountains with white on top," he said. "I'm aiming for them."

"Frag yeah!" Brawl punched the air happily, and pressed himself closer to the wall.

Blast Off rechecked his calculations. He knew they were correct, but he wanted Brawl to stay silent long enough that he could savour the anticipation. He'd only ever had civilian grade weapons before; the military tech that Onslaught bought up like other mechs bought wax polish was in a totally different league to anything he'd experienced.

He allowed the charge to accumulate, a low thrum spreading out from his cannons to envelop his entire frame. Static built, crawling across his instruments. Through his onboard cameras, he watched Brawl tense.

All right, he thought. "Countdown initiated. Test firing in three… two… onearghhhhhhhhhhhhfragYES!"

His frame erupted in a glorious pulse of searing, violet heat. The lasers discharged, twin lines speeding towards their target, but Blast Off hardly saw them for the molten glow that lit up each and every part of him.

"Woohoo!" Brawl bounced some more, but Blast Off ignored him.

That was… amazing, intense, beautiful. He spun around, watching the ground, the stars, the planet again, feeling the heat disperse to a satiated warmth, observing his systems recover with a wonder he hadn't experienced since his first ever interface.

"Awesome," Brawl said, and for once he did so quietly.

And no wonder, Blast Off thought as he focused again on his target, employing more than just his visual sensors to appreciate the full range of available data.

The mountains were gone. No more snow-capped peaks, no more green valleys. Instead, a rising plume of grey dust billowed up, flickering and sparking with purple-tinged lightning.

Activating his record function, Blast Off spoke slowly, attempting for the sake of his own dignity to keep his excitement out of his voice. "Test fire one: success. Targeting systems fully operational. Test subject obliterated." He stopped, wondering if this was what Vortex felt like when he couldn't quite prevent himself from gleefully insane laughter.

"All right!" Brawl cried. "Let's go again!"

Tingling from the tip of his nose to the ends of his thrusters, it took all of Blast Off's willpower not to yell out 'YES!'. Instead, he affected his usual bored tone. "If we must," he said.


	5. Five Joors, darkfic, see content advice

**Title:** Five Joors  
**Genre:** darkfic  
**Content advice:** dark and bleak, implied rape, implied torture, murder of OC, enslavement, implied slash  
**Characters:** Slag-for-Chips (OC), Vortex, Driveshaft (OC)  
**Summary:** Set on Cybertron before the war. Slag-for-Chips can't remember his proper name any more, but he can remember a whole load of other things.  
**Notes:** Companion piece to 'The Tragic Tale of Shiny and Slag-for-Chips' (which can be found under 'Vortex')

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It didn't take long before he forgot his own name.

He could remember his partner, Driveshaft. A slick of blue, quick and loud in the Praxus night. Glimmering with a dozen shades of neon, the air thick with burning rubber. It was always so good between them, so hot and fast and easy.

He clung to those memories, the endless drives, the foolhardy races. A trunk full of high grade, a compartment stacked with mood enhancers. All good, clean fun, or if it was bad and dirty fun, it was the kind that never hurt anyone.

Driveshaft used to call him something, a pet name, a shortened version of his designation. But he'd forgotten it. Too many botched attempts at reprogramming, too many blows to the head when he stumbled or recharged too late or forgot one of a long list of things he was meant to do.

Too long spent with Vortex, shut up in the dark. His fans whirred, it was too warm, the walls too close. His new frame needed room, air, the freedom of the skies, not this enforced intimacy, a grey arm slung over him, a leg hooked around his own. But Vortex had locked him up, taken his transformation cog, made him walk everywhere. Said he should never have had the upgrade to an airframe, said he should have stayed a grounder like he deserved. Like Shiny.

He shuddered. Couldn't call him Shiny, his designation was Driveshaft. He corrected himself: _had been_ Driveshaft.

The memories changed, files opening without a conscious command, scenes playing and replaying without his consent. Driveshaft's blank expression in the footage Vortex sent across half the galaxy to lure him back to Cybertron. The moment in that office when he knew he'd played it wrong. A mosaic of demolition, ripe with ozone and spattered with oil. Flattened tires and rusting gears, a laser core bright and shining and so very far from its rightful place. Then dull, crumpled, squeezed between dark fingers until there was no light left at all.

The memories kept coming, unstoppable as the interrogator's cold rages, unpreventable as his forthcoming reformatting. Driveshaft was dead, along with his freedom, his peace of mind. And soon, he would lose his sentience too.

A professional job this time, Vortex had told him. Get his chips cleaned out, get his databanks removed. Start afresh, new and eager and competent. A proper little drone.

He stifled a whimper. He couldn't make noise; Vortex would wake, would hurt him. Best just to lay here, to focus on the memories, to gain control again over what played and what remained locked away.

He had five joors left to remember his partner, before he lost Driveshaft like he'd lost his own name. Five joors. He steered his mind back to Praxus; it wasn't long enough.

Return to Top


	6. Credit, PG, crack, drabble

**AN:** Just a little drabble in which Onslaught and Brawl discuss Swindle's latest mistake..

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"Hey boss!" Brawl lumbered through the hangar door, a crate of shells in each hand. "What happened to Swindle? He's all mutterin' and pacin' and stuff."

Onslaught sighed. 'Boss' was better than nothing, but would it kill his subordinates to call him 'sir' once in a while? "He let Vortex borrow one of his credit cards."

Brawl snickered. He set the boxes down, careful with explosives as he was with nothing else. "Hurhurhur, y'should see the look on his face. Like he just realised he done somethin' _real_ stupid."

That, Onslaught thought, was an understatement.

Brawl glanced around. "Uh, where's Tex?"

"Monacus."


	7. Blast Off, Vortex, OC, crack

**Title:** The first time Blast Off walked in on Vortex and regretted it

**Content Advice:** crack, non-explicit p'n'p smut

**Characters:** Vortex/unnamed OC, Blast Off

**Notes:** This is set when Blast Off has only just started working for Onslaught. **  
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**[Cybertron, the Golden Age]**

Blast Off opened the door and froze.

"Oh scrap," he said. "My apologies…"

But he didn't just freeze, he dropped the datapad. Its little blue screen cracked and fizzled out. All of Onslaught's instructions, gone. He could remember them, but… Oh slag, that wasn't important right now. He'd just walked in on two mechs interfacing. Two of his new colleagues. Interfacing. People he'd have to see on a regular basis. People he'd have to talk to and look in the optics and oh Sigma he'd caught them _interfacing_.

This wasn't the best start to his third shift cycle in his new job.

"Hey." The salutation was sultry, seductive even. Shame Blast Off couldn't see his face, what with staring so hard at the floor.

What was the appropriate response in this kind of situation? It wasn't as though this had ever happened to him before, he had no frame of reference. He fought the rising heat – part embarrassment and part something he really and truly did not want to acknowledge, especially not right now – and wished, not for the first time, that he'd been built a military mech with a battle mask. It would have been so very useful.

"Um, hello. Sorry for…" Sorry for _what?_ What did he think he was he doing? He should just go. He hadn't seen their faces, and would continue to bask in blissful ignorance provided he kept staring at the floor. That's it, optics on the purple metal and shuffle those feet. Turn around and leave, quietly, quickly, no don't look up, Blast Off what the slag do you think you're doing!

It was the copter. It had to be the copter. Why had he looked up?

And what in the pit were they doing? Blast Off knew what interfacing looked like, and that? That wasn't it. Well, it was. There were cables, and they were connected, but there were limbs and fingers and was the copter _licking_ that other mech? While Blast Off watched? Um.

Blast Off began to wish that the structural integrity of the twenty seventh storey would fail, and the floor would open up and swallow them. Both of them. He couldn't think of any other way out of this.

And the other mech was looking at him. The blue grounder whose legs were wrapped around the copter's waist, whose azure optics were fixed directly on Blast Off's.

"Hey!" he snapped. "If you're gonna watch, you can close the fragging _door_."

"I'm not watching!" Blast Off blurted. Oh that was dignified. Not to mention untrue. He _was_ watching, whether he wanted to or not. If only the servos in his legs would unlock.

The copter grinned. "You could always join us."

"No he fraggin' can't," the blue mech said. "And you've stopped, why've you stopped? Get _on_ with it!"

Blast Off shook his head and backed away. "I… uh…" Just _leave_ already, he told himself, but his feet moved slowly. Too slowly. Oh, thank Sigma, the door, OK, not looking at the copter any more. Not really. Not directly, anyway.

There was a sharp clang as the blue mech slapped the copter hard. On the aft. No no no, Blast Off really didn't want to have seen that. And he certainly didn't want to hear the copter's answering laugh, or the pleased "Oh, slag YES!" from the blue mech as the copter appeared to resume… what he'd been doing before.

Finally, Blast Off got a grip on his servos, and flung himself through the door. Memory purge, that's what he needed. Just a few credits, and he could scour his databanks clean of this entire embarrassing incident.

Just a few credits.

Blast Off made it back to his office before he realised he'd left the datapad behind.


	8. Blast Off, Vortex darkfic, see summary

This is a companion piece to 'The Tragic Tale of Shiny and Slag-for-Chips', which can be found under 'Vortex' chapter 2.

**Summary:** Blast Off likes the effect this has on Vortex, but he isn't happy about witnessing the act itself.

**Content advice:** dark themes, including implied torture, murder, implied noncon, implied slavery.

**Characters:** Blast Off, Vortex, OC: Shiny (Driveshaft), OC: Slag-for-Chips**  
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Blast Off gaped.

There were no words for this.

None he wanted to think, anyway, let alone give voice to.

The door closed behind him with a hiss, a small mercy in a building full of inquisitive mechs. Blast Off's innards gurgled, a backwash of fumes clogging in his throat.

Vortex sat calmly, slick with fluids and gritty with soot. The eye of a whorl of destruction, he was surrounded by parts. Or parts of parts. A cable discharged sparks at his feet; shreds of armour lay scattered around; the remains of an engine plinked sadly as it cooled.

The copter's optics were offline, his battle mask drawn and his expression oddly serene. He held a grey canister loosely in one hand. With a lurch of his tanks, Blast Off recognised the contours of a laser core. It was empty.

It took him a while to notice the other mech. He huddled whimpering in a corner, knees tight to his chest, optics wide and every inch of him shaking. He looked up, his lips moving. His silent plea was sickening, and Blast Off fought the urge to kick him.

"What now?" Blast Off asked.

Vortex grinned. There was lubricant at the corner of his mouth, a translucent sheen over blackened metal. Scorch marks; Blast Off didn't want to guess what he'd done.

"Hold him."

The other mech flinched.

"No." Blast Off crossed his arms. It was an effort not to head for the door. "I'm not touching him."

"Helpful, aren't you." Vortex sighed; his optics booted with a quick flare of crimson light. He tossed the empty laser core over his shoulder and stood, dripping fluids. He flashed his captive a quick smile. "How much do you think you're worth?"

The other mech shook his head. His optics were dull, unfocused. He didn't look at Vortex, but at the loose heap of cooling scrap, the abandoned laser core.

"How much? Come on, you've got to have an idea. I mean," Vortex paused, stretching. "You got that upgrade, and now look at you. All wings and cockpit. Heh."

The captive began to keen, an aggravating stream of nonsense noises that were probably meant to be pleas. Blast Off had no idea why he bothered.

"Swindle help with this?" he said to Vortex.

Glass crunched as Vortex approached the trembling mech. "Kinda," he said. "Fragger's about as useless as an organic in a smelting pit. He got a comm about a breem in and had to be somewhere else. Comm, my aft. He just doesn't like to watch." Vortex grinned and knelt. He stroked the mech's helm, a gently pointed nosecone of the type that Blast Off always thought made someone look like a right and utter tool. The mech's keening raised in pitch, but he didn't try to run.

Blast Off huffed. He didn't like to watch either, especially not this stage, where Vortex had finished with work and evidently felt that he had the right to play.

"Swindle knows how much you're worth," Vortex whispered. "Should I let him sell you? Or would you make it worth my while if I kept you around?"

"Oh for frag sake," Blast Off snapped. He angled one of his leg-mounted cannons, aiming it at the captive. It was disgusting how the mech's optics widened at the sound, how his trembling got worse, and still he didn't run or fight. He just cowered. Utterly pathetic. "Lay back and open up," Blast Off said. "He'll let you live."

"Ruin the surprise, why don't you," Vortex sighed, as though he actually cared. But he didn't, he couldn't. Blast Off was beginning to suspect that Vortex was incapable of caring. Not about this, not about anything. Or anyone. Except himself.

It was horrible how much enjoyment he seemed to glean from his victim's distress. Blast Off wrenched himself away from that line of thought. There would be benefits, he knew. Later. When Vortex was less calm and more frantic, more demanding, when he would beg to be restrained, to be denied, when he would want Blast Off and only Blast Off for as long as the shuttle could hold him.

But knowing how he got into that state, it wasn't pleasant.

Blast Off kept the cannon aimed until the captive finally lay down and withdrew the cover of his interface panel, then he left.

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**AN:** Yep, Blast Off's a massive hypocrite, but that's the way I like him best. ;)


	9. Chill, Blast off and Vortex, fluff

**Title:** Chill

**Characters: **Blast Off and Vortex

**Summary: **Stuck on an alien planet, Vortex has a problem, and Blast Off isn't helping.

**Notes:** naboru fancied IC OTP snuggles and this happened. It's as fluffy as these guys get.

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"It's getting colder," Vortex observed, in that aggravatingly calm voice he only used when Blast Off was being unreasonable. "Far colder."

Blast Off huffed, and the traces of vapour rising from his vents turned to frost on his armour.

"I'm gonna _die_."

Blast Off glared. "No you're not." There were seven joors until the sun was due to rise, and another five before conditions would be right to exit the atmosphere. He knew the exact composition of the air, how much colder it would get before it couldn't get any colder at all, and how soon - to the astrosecond - Vortex would end up in stasis because of it. The heliformer most emphatically was not going to die.

"Yeah, right," Vortex said. He ruffled his rotors, and the sheen of ice cracked and tinkled to the far icier ground.

"Be grateful there's no wind," Blast Off said.

Vortex spat a laugh. "Grateful, yeah." He sidled closer.

Blast Off stood up and took another few steps away.

"Oh come _on!_" Vortex yelled, his calm shattered. "It's like you want me to freeze!"

"When you do, you'll be quiet," Blast Off commented.

The heliformer sagged. "Frag you." He sighed. "Fraggin' shuttle." He kicked the ground, and Blast Off was certain it didn't have the desired effect; the ice split, but so did the glass in Vortex's foot. "Oh for frag's sake!"

"You're ridiculous," Blast Off said, grateful for the mask that hid the slight lift of his lips.

"You're a coghead," Vortex retorted. "I'm gonna freeze out here, and you're gonna have to lug me back in fraggin' stasis 'cause you're too proud to share some of that excessive insulation. You could at least transform and let me sit this out on board, but _nooooo_, you couldn't do that. Not for the mech who saved your stupid aft in that bar last quartex."

"After endangering my... aft," Blast Off corrected him.

"And not," Vortex continued loudly, "for the mech you woke up with your interface cable last time you were overcharged. Or for the mech who's seen you-"

Blast Off roared his engines, loud enough to drown out the heliformer's whining. It didn't stop Vortex sidling closer again. His movements were slowing, his optics growing dim. Blast Off could imagine the hydraulic fluid freezing in his lines, the energon growing sluggish in his pumps. He had maybe another breem, then blessed silence.

"Ugh." Vortex sat down at Blast Off's feet and folded his arms. "I'll just freeze then," he said. "It'll be like that time you vented me into space."

Blast Off almost laughed. Almost. "You had a temperature-sensitive parasite," he said. "In addition to your malfunctioning vocaliser."

"Not malfunctioning," Vortex muttered. "'m sociable."

"You're psychotic."

Vortex vented a sigh that had far less power behind it than it should have had, and fell back onto the floor. "Ugh."

Blast Off left him another half a breem. A lesson, he thought, although one that he doubted Vortex would bother to remember. Still, his joints had begun to visibly freeze before Blast Off initiated his transformation sequence.

He settled on the ice, the chill hardly registering compared with the conditions in space. He opened his cargo bay door. "Get in."

Vortex scrambled aboard and huddled against the cargo netting. For once, he didn't say a thing.


	10. Blast Off and Vortex go to Vos

**Notes:** Set in the Golden Age, long before the war. Blast Off and Vortex are arrested for a crime they did commit.

* * *

.

* * *

"Are you scared of me?" Vortex said. He leant back in the purposefully uncomfortable chair and offered a wide friendly smile to the officer whose unfortunate job it was to interrogate him. "You can tell me, I won't laugh."

"I am not," the officer replied, obviously trying to sound firm. He was a Praxan, an alpha, all doorwings and shiny chrome details. Vortex doubted he'd been on the job for long; in the absence of a name badge, perhaps he'd call him Officer Rookie. "I can levy fines for an implied threat," said Officer Rookie, "Are you aware of that?"

"I dare you." Vortex propped his feet on the table, tipping the chair back on two legs.

The officer cleared his vents with a huff. "There's a lot I could fine you for," he said. "An awful lot."

"So do it." Vortex yawned, baring his denta and making the most of his exposed face. The authorities had taken his battle mask along with his civilian grade weapons shortly after his arrest. It was nice to feel the air for a change.

It was also nice to feel the small yet significant weight of two fully charged laser scalpels just beneath his pectoral vent. For some reason, the sergeant on check-in had only rifled through his compartments. Lax, that's what it was.

At least he was having fun.

"You're not helping yourself," Officer Rookie said.

Vortex drummed his fingers on the sides of the chair. "No, I don't suppose I am. Do you want me to?"

* * *

.

* * *

Blast Off hunched behind an under-sized desk, his aft planted precariously on an under-sized chair, and glared.

"Sir, if you could please answer the question." Sitting opposite him was a large green femme. Officer Powerhouse was her designation, but it seemed more like a description. She, Blast Off couldn't help but notice, had a chair of an appropriate size.

"You know my name," Blast Off said.

"I'm going to take that as an affirmative," Powerhouse said. "Designation Blast Off, construction date 82.34289 vorns post-emancipation. Initial purpose: space exploration. Current occupation: self-employed logistical consultant." She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "You've come a long way from Altihex."

"I am capable of interstellar flight," Blast Off said. "_That_ is a long way."

"I'm sure it is, and I'm very sure you are," Powerhouse said. "But I'm more concerned with what else you might be capable of. Where were you on the third night of the Vos air show?"

"In Vos," Blast Off replied.

When it became evident he wasn't going to add to his comment, Powerhouse said, "Vos is a big place."

Blast Off's feet itched where his cannons would usually have sat. What he wouldn't give just to shoot a hole in the wall and fly away. "Not," he said, "compared to space."

Powerhouse hit the intercom, giving Blast Off a dry look as she spoke. "Bring me a cube of mid grade," she said, "It's gonna be a long night."

* * *

.

* * *

Vortex rocked on the tipped up chair. "Was I in Vos?" he mused. "Third night of the Air Show?" He ruffled his tail rotors. "First night I was in Kaon at the Rusty Cog. You ever been there? It's this little bar in the foot of this decommissioned Guardian." He considered Officer Rookie's stern little face. "Don't suppose you have," he said. "Second night... Frag, think I got overcharged with some grounders I met in Camshafts, and we went racing around the foundries. That's another thing you can add to that list of fineable offences you got going there... One count of interfacing while airborne, two counts of flying under the influence, and one count of accidentally scratching the bodywork on this _fine_ piece of aft Praxan, I mean _wow_ you should'a seen him. Not that he minded..."

Officer Rookie's mouth twitched.

"Looked kinda like you," Vortex said, apparently giving it some thought. "Got the same thing going for him in the hood area." He tipped the chair upright just long enough to make an unsubtle gesture with both hands over his own chest. "Y'know, like that. He was bigger though, and he didn't have that stick up his exhaust."

"The third night," Officer Rookie said. There was a square of slightly off-coloured paint on his shoulder. Location of his name badge, Vortex thought. Probably locked in a desk somewhere, so Vortex couldn't know his designation, couldn't use it against him. Ha, they were learning.

"What about it?" Vortex asked.

The Praxan looked at his datapad, and Vortex could see him forcing down the frustration. "Describe your whereabouts on the third night of the Vos air show."

"In Vos." Vortex shrugged. "You're gonna ask where in Vos now ain't you?"

Officer Rookie nodded.

"You gotta say 'yes'," Vortex said, laying on his best 'I'm being helpful' voice. "For the recording? Otherwise none of this is admissible in court. Unless..." He grinned at the ceiling and waved. "Unless you're getting this all on a vid."

It was only because he was watching for it that Vortex saw Officer Rookie flinch.

* * *

.

* * *

"I will assume that a crime has been committed," Blast Off stated. He nudged the table leg with his foot, trying to dispel the itching.

"You assume right," Powerhouse confirmed. "Did you remain at the Electrum Fountain Hotel for the duration of your stay in Vos?"

"Of course not," Blast Off said.

"And?" Powerhouse prompted.

Blast Off just stared.

Powerhouse stared back.

"And _what?_" Blast Off said. "How am I to provide assistance if your questions lack specificity?"

"_And what_," Powerhouse said, "did you do when you weren't in your hotel room?"

Blast Off rolled his optics skywards. If he transformed, chances were his alt mode would tear a hole right through the ceiling with only minimal damage to his frame. Onslaught would pay for his repairs; he would have to. It was Onslaught who had got him into this situation.

A plague of rust on senators and their customs regulations, Blast Off thought. And on Kaon's criminal factions, and their distaste for the same. They could all go to the Pit.

And so could Vortex; the rotary could find his own way home.

"Was that a bit too unspecific?" Powerhouse said. "Maybe you'd like it if I spoke more slowly."

Blast Off suppressed a growl. "Inventory: Vos Air Show..."

* * *

.

* * *

"Stop." Vortex slammed his fist on the table, making Officer Rookie jump. "You're doing it all wrong. You got no presence. Here, let me..." He swung out of the chair and onto the table, crossing his legs and leaning over his interrogator in a way that he liked to think of as productive looming. Behind him, his chair teetered for a moment on two legs, then clattered to the floor.

Officer Rookie's mouth moved, but nothing came out.

"And here's another error," Vortex said, taking the datapad from the Officer's unresisting hand. "This should be blank. It's just a prop. Have everything up on your internal feed, not where I can take it off you." He jumped up on the table, holding the datapad out of arm's reach, and scrolled through the contents.

Officer Rookie finally found his voice. "Give that back this instant!"

"How about no?" Vortex said. His optics left the datapad long enough to see Officer Rookie's firearm aimed in his direction. He snickered. "Hey look, you got a little vid of me talking to those seekers. You ever frag a seeker? They get all that charge build up while they're flying, and-"

The door burst open, and a large green femme strode in. She was tall, almost twice the height of Officer Rookie, who she glared at as though he was about to be busted down to Cadet Rookie. She grabbed Vortex around the rotor hub and pulled, using the astrosecond where his mind reeled and his frame wanted nothing more than to go straight into recharge to swipe the datapad from his hands.

Vortex sighed, remaining limp as the femme kicked his chair upright and set him down in it.

"I'm Officer Powerhouse," she said, as the door closed on Officer Rookie's wilting doorwings. "I'll be taking over this interview."

* * *

.

* * *

Blast Off could only speculate as to where Officer Powerhouse had gone and why. Not that he cared. All he wanted was to be released.

No, that was a lie. All he wanted was to be released _and_ for Onslaught to stop sending him on trips to legitimate business meetings at exactly the same time and to exactly the same places as he sent Vortex to perform considerably less legal tasks.

He must have been the most expensive getaway ride in Cybertronian history.

After half a breem, he swapped his under-sized chair for the one Officer Powerhouse had occupied. That was better, although his legs still itched. He wondered if they'd return his cannons. They were civilian grade; he never went on this kind of trip with illegal hardware. But he was a suspect in a high profile murder - or so the stern green representative of the law had informed him - he had no idea what would be returned to him and when.

If they didn't give his star charts back, there would be trouble.

* * *

.

* * *

"This is Senator Valence," Powerhouse said. She held the holo-sheet for him to see, but obviously wouldn't allow him to take it.

"Uh-huh?" Vortex said. So that was his name; Vortex had been calling him Senator Vacant.

"Valence disappeared from his hotel room in the Electrum Fountain on the third night of the Vos air show." Powerhouse pressed the corner of the sheet and the image changed. "His parts began to surface forty-five joors later at an industrial chemical reclamation plant outside of Kalis."

"What am I looking at?" Vortex tilted his head. He knew exactly what he was looking at; he'd thought Valence's face had been ugly before he'd thrown it in the chem pit.

"His helm," Powerhouse said levelly. She pressed the sheet to change the hologram again. "The cranial portion complete with optical orbits. Forensics believes the cybernetic brain was removed before the body was dumped. Luckily for us, his leg got caught in a turbine, and the whole pit had to be drained."

It wasn't hard to keep from laughing, but control was more of a challenge under Powerhouse than it had been with Officer Rookie. "Only one reason you're showing me this," Vortex said. "You think I had something to do with it."

"Did you?" Powerhouse had a level glare, neutral but loaded with the promise of a world of trouble if she didn't get to the truth.

Vortex decided he liked her. "Pick me up by the rotors again and I'll tell you," he said.

* * *

.

* * *

Blast Off had entered a light recharge by the time the door opened. He brought his optics online, flickering as they adjusted to the light.

Powerhouse had not come back. Instead, he was faced with a small grounder of the type who liked to think of themselves as Alpha caste. Blast Off sniffed his derision; they couldn't even fly.

The grounder stiffened, then sat gingerly in the small chair. It was the perfect size for him.

"I have a few questions," he said. "I would appreciate your cooperation."

"Then ask them," Blast Off snapped.

The grounder vented deep, and Blast Off wanted to smack him back into the corridor. Did they get paid to waste time?

Eventually, the grounder's vocaliser reset. "On the fourth day of the Vos air show, did you keep company?"

"Unfortunately," Blast Off said. "Do close your mouth, I can see where this is going." He straightened his back, his arms still folded. "I spent the day with that insufferable heliformer."

"Insufferable?"

"You can't have met him," Blast Off sighed.

The grounder shuddered, and Blast Off almost smiled; perhaps he had. "And what did you do?" the grounder asked.

Blast Off's engine growled, and the vibration made his interviewer startle. "That is hardly relevant," he said. He'd spent long enough suppressing the memory of those parts in his cargo hold, of Vortex putting his hand in the empty helm and waggling the jaw to make it sing. He didn't appreciate being reminded now, particularly not when it became obvious that his response was not enough.

"I'm afraid it _is_ relevant," the small grounder said. "On the third day of the Vos air show, Senator Valence was abducted from the hotel room four doors from your own. He was then murdered, and the following day his body was disposed of in a chemical plant on the outskirts of Kalis. A shuttle answering your description was seen flying from Vos in the direction of Kalis on the day in question. And so, I need to ask you, what were your exact whereabouts on the fourth day of the Vos air show, and what were you and the rotary you mentioned doing?"

Blast Off groaned. And so it came to this, the latest indignity in a long and ever-expanding inventory of insults he had been forced to endure since his expulsion from the Institute in Altihex.

"I was in my hotel room in Vos," Blast Off snarled. "With Vortex. We were... intimate. I refuse to divulge the details of my private life. If you want a comprehensive account, I suggest you ask _him_."

* * *

.

* * *

"You could have saved us both a lot of time." Powerhouse was not happy. Vortex dangled from her hand by his rotors, motor relays static and his hydraulics at a weird state of ebb. Even Onslaught never bothered to hold him up for this long.

Powerhouse obviously thought of it as a weapon in her anti-rotary arsenal.

Vortex thought of it as an interrogation to remember, possibly when he was alone.

"He doesn't like me talking about it," Vortex said, because pushing his luck was always fun. "Have your guys got the audio from the hotel yet? They record _everything_, you know that? Heh, the shuttle didn't."

That was a lie, just like his claim that he and Blast Off had spent the entire day in each other's company in the hotel room. A high quality recording of them conversing (and scrap, but that had been difficult to put together) had played for the duration of their trip to Kalis. The more entertaining portions of the soundtrack were, Vortex was pleased to recall, all genuine. Not that he could see a repeat of it any time soon; the shuttle would not be pleased.

But when _was_ the shuttle pleased?

Powerhouse's large engine rumbled, and she set Vortex on the floor. "Thank you for your eventual and untimely co-operation, sir," she said.

"Sorry?" Vortex grinned. "Not sure I heard you over the sarcasm. Can I have my guns back now?"

Powerhouse smiled. "I don't think so," she said. "We've got you on twenty seven different public order offences in five cities over the past two orns alone. That adds up to nineteen thousand credits or one quartex in jail."

"Nineteen thousand? For _that?_"

Powerhouse smirked, and folded her big green arms over her chest. "You're a public nuisance," she said. "Now what's it to be?"

* * *

.

* * *

Blast Off stood on the balcony of his room in the Electrum Fountain. A datapad lay on the balustrade, hooked up by a cable to his wrist. His star charts were still there, although someone had hacked the encryption. They could just have asked him for the code. Morons.

Vortex perched on the ornate metalwork, sipping high grade and occasionally powering up his weapons for no perceptible purpose.

"You owe me," Blast Off said.

Vortex looked up as a trine of seekers speared overhead. "Add it to the log," he said. "Fragged if I'm gonna remember that."

"Three hundred and fifty two thousand and fourteen credits," Blast Off said, "and five favours of an unspecified nature to be collected at a time of my choosing." Not that Blast Off could imagine any time he would need the rotary's help, but in their line of business it never hurt to be prepared.

Vortex downed the rest of his cube with a sigh. "You know I'm good for it," he said, and for once he seemed content to just stand there, taking in the cityscape, watching the fliers go by.

Blast Off nodded. He didn't know how narrowly they'd escaped prison, and he didn't want to know. He watched as the city lights began to dim and the first stars of evening were revealed. Their own star was too distant now for true night and day, but still he welcomed that artificial marker of their planet's rotation.

Just as he welcomed these rare moments when Vortex proved that he was, against all evidence, capable of shutting up.

Blast Off suppressed a smirk and reached for his drink.


	11. Ten Vorn Anniversary, horror, Vortex

Vortex is admitted to a psychiatric hospital after leaving the military. He doesn't expect it to be haunted.

Set in the Golden Age on Cybertron, Dysfunction AU.

Rated R

Contains OCs, horror of a ghostly and generally weird variety, violence, gore, mention of interfacing.

Written for the gestalt_love Trick or Treat challenge, to the prompt _Any Combaticons or Constructicons: Asylum_.

* * *

.

* * *

"This isn't a prison, Vortex." Ward Supervisor Gauge held the door open for him. Everything was bright, fresh, clean, down to the cheerful red highlights on her antennae. "You can join the other patients in the rec room."

"Or I can stay here," Vortex said. He calculated fifteen separate and highly entertaining ways to kill the femme before she crossed the threshold.

"You've been here two orns." She sat beside him on the bunk. "We can hardly assess your progress if you keep to your room all the time."

He shrugged; that was kinda the point. He didn't want them assessing him, not with all the weird scrap going down.

The ceiling had eyes, for a start. Organic eyes, dozens of them, in different shades and shapes and sizes. Like the watery-weak gel-filled spheres of so many stupid aliens on so many stupid planets where he'd spent far too much of his life. He avoided looking at them, in case it counted against his release.

"We don't want to keep you here forever," Gauge said. Her smile was kind, exact, the product of significant practice or very strong programming. "You don't want to stay here forever."

Vortex flicked his rotors. "You want me to go to the rec room?"

"We need to see how you cope in social situations," Gauge said.

"Really."

It was a joke, a hoop he had to jump through to complete his honourable discharge from the Cybertronian military. A civilian's life was just one short stay in a psychiatric ward away.

If only it wasn't _this_ psychiatric ward. He'd never hallucinated before without a significant physical cause; here, he hallucinated all the time.

He was pretty sure the eyes weren't real. Gauge certainly couldn't see them, although the saline solution they leaked on him in the night felt wet enough. There was a hand too, ridiculous and loud. It scurried through the vents, trailing cables and a never-ending flow of energon. At first, it had been creepy. Then, when it had failed to present any kind of threat, he'd started to find it kind of entertaining. He couldn't laugh at it though, the staff might be watching.

And then there were the dead mechs. They walked the corridors, slack-mouthed and tongues lolling, mingling with the living and occasionally walking right through them.

The first time he'd seen one, he'd tried to kill it. That had earnt him a temporary motion inhibitor, and a cycle under constant surveillance. Two orns later, and he was used to them, even if he had no idea what they were.

"You've seen a lot," Gauge said. "We understand. Fully thirty two percent of all combat veterans pass through a facility like this before entering civilian life. We're equipped to help, you just need to let us."

"Is that a dig?" Vortex said. He allowed himself a smirk, despite that they'd taken his mask on admission.

Gauge was unfazed. "It's a hint," she said. "I'll be frank with you, you've given our therapists the run around since you got here. You turn everything back on them, you won't talk about your past, you won't discuss your experiences-"

"It's classified," Vortex said, as though he was fed up with repeating it. "Official Military Secrets. I talk, I die. Screw that."

Gauge pursed her lips. "Everything you tell us is in confidence," she said. "And besides, you can talk about the things that have happened to you without touching on any sensitive material."

"Uh-huh." Vortex kicked out his legs and fanned his tail rotors. "No."

"You're not making this any easier."

Who for, Vortex thought, me or you? He yawned, giving the ceiling a casual glance. The eyes were staring at him again, but that was nothing new. "So..." he said.

"So?" Gauge prompted.

"I go out there and make friendly with the natives, and you'll put your glyph on my datasheet and I can go."

"In time," Gauge said. "Provided you meet certain criteria, yes. We have to make sure that you're ready to lead a civilian life."

Vortex was thoroughly ready. Drinking, partying, getting laid on a schedule that didn't include mandatory training and reports; he couldn't be more ready. But walking out into a corridor of the sick and the dead, resisting the urge to put his hand through someone's chest, he didn't know if he could do that. There was an edge to the air, a taste like the first lick of energon after a really good punch in the face. It was violent, needy; it called to him.

In his room, he could watch the eyes watching him, could imagine the doctors and nurses, the psychologists and his dear Ward Supervisor making notes about his every movement, and not let it get to him. But out there?

He wasn't sure. It was like he was back in Standard Augmentation again, a new-build with new and powerful urges, and no experience of self-restraint.

"Come on," Gauge said. "I'll walk you there. It's almost re-fuelling time."

Vortex vented deep, giving his rotors a little shake. Better to make it look as though he was nervous than to give them any indication how close he was to testing the tensile strength of Ward Supervisor Gauge's cheerful little antennae.

In the hallway, the dead converged on him. They lunged and loomed, as though they expected him to be afraid. But they couldn't touch him, they were no threat. Some of them reminded him of people he'd met or people he'd killed, or just people he'd seen lying dead on a battlefield or in an alley behind a bar after after closing.

Their empty chests and the green glow of their optics did nothing to chill his core. They weren't real, not like the buzz in his circuits and the tingling of his empty weapon mounts.

Gauge led him to the energon queue, then left him to select a table and companions all by himself. These new mechs opened up for him, giving him room to sit and a space in their conversation. They were two combat veterans and a twitchy little bomb disposal unit whose neck just cried out to be snapped.

Vortex sipped his fuel with care, both hands on the cube. He catalogued the room, dividing the contents into the real and the unreal. The unreal clustered most tightly around the energon dispenser, like they thought they could steal a drop when no-one was looking. Vortex wondered why they didn't just stand under the central cooling fan and open their mouths, there was enough of the stuff dripping from the fan blades and the spreadeagled groundframe who'd been pinned to the ceiling just above it.

Unreal, Vortex thought. Definitely unreal.

The bomb disposal unit leaned close, and Vortex had to blur his optics and count to ten to stop himself from doing something he might regret.

"You saw him," the mech whispered. "Tell me you saw him. You were looking, he was just there!"

"Saw who?" Vortex said. The guy stapled to the ceiling hadn't exactly gone anywhere.

"There's... there was someone on the ceiling. He was bleeding. I... please tell me you saw him!"

Vortex looked up. Nope, the guy was still there. "Uh... You said he vanished?"

The bomb disposal bot reached for his empty cube. His hands trembled, and scrap but he was tempting. "I... I gotta go." He looked up again, and bolted.

"Weird," commented one of the veterans. "OK, you wanna play Strategic Defense? They got a board over in the corner."

Vortex went along with it, but kept his optics on the other patients. Who else could see the dead mech on the ceiling? And what about the ghosts who seemed to have given up on the energon dispenser and were now wandering aimlessly around the room; could anyone see them too?

A joor or so later, after a solid run of defeats at Strategic Defense, Vortex thought he could pick out who could see the visions and who couldn't. Roughly twenty percent of the patients and two of the five visible staff showed symptoms of seeing things they really wished they couldn't.

Vortex ran through scenarios in his mind. Psychotropic stimulants were out; there was nothing in the energon and the only therapy he'd been prescribed had been the talking kind with a small side order of crafting useless objects out of scrap metal.

A virus could provide the answer, but wouldn't there be other symptoms as well? Vortex wasn't sure, viruses weren't exactly his favourite toy. It could be something in the air, a gas perhaps, but surely more people would be sitting nervously in their seats trying to look like they weren't scared witless. And how was it that he could see these things constantly, where everyone else seemed to be getting only occasional momentary surprises?

The bomb disposal bot reappeared at speed, and almost tripped himself onto Vortex's lap.

"They don't let you do that here, sparky," the larger veteran warned. The smaller one snickered and slapped the side of the gaming board until the holograms re-stabilised.

Vortex caught the bot's arm without meaning to, and it took a conscious effort for him to let go.

"It's getting worse," the bot said; his voice was low and his thick grabbable neck was dangerously close. He looked around, his optics wide under his clear blue visor. "There's a femme in my room, she... She gets closer every night. Closer and closer. She's almost on my berth, and no-one else can see her."

"What do you think's gonna happen?" Vortex asked, more to distract himself than the bomb disposal bot.

"I.. I can't say."

"Can't or won't?" Vortex laid his palms flat on the seat; if his hands were occupied, he couldn't be doing things that would get him locked away for longer. Behind the little bot one of the dead was looming. Its optics were black with a pinprick of sharp green light in the exact centre. It grinned.

"I..." The little bot looked all around, through the looming ghost and up at the ceiling before nudging Vortex over to share his seat. "I don't know for sure, but this place wasn't always a psychiatric facility. It used to be a lab, back in the day. I came here once, had to diffuse a two megatonne class five clusterbomb someone had brought in for a prank. They had these machines, all kinds of things. _Old things._ Like, really old, from before the Emancipation."

"They were fraggin' with Quintesson tech?" Vortex asked, and the bot almost shot out of his armour.

"Not so loud!" he hissed. "Scrap, you wanna ARGH!" He leapt up again, this time having apparently spotted the dead thing right in front of his face.

Out of curiosity, Vortex nudged the dead mech's shin with his foot. There was a small amount of resistance, but his foot passed through.

The bomb disposal bot huddled closer, venting hard. "OK, OK, it's gone now, oh scrap."

"Old tech ain't an explanation," Vortex said.

"It's not any old tech," the bot spat. "It was bad stuff, dimensional destabilisers, miniature black holes, reanimation machines, that kinda stuff."

"And you think someone did something and it's still having an effect now?" Vortex relaxed his grip on the seat ever so slightly. This was actually kinda entertaining, if a little spooky.

"No," the bot said, and his frame shook so hard his hip tire kept hitting Vortex's thigh. "I _know_ they did. Listen, there was this scientist, she was the Perceptor of her time. She used the tech, she went through the wormhole, she... She came back and... Where she'd been, it changed her. But no-one caught her until it was too late."

"Lemme guess," Vortex said. "She came back and murdered a load of bots in all kinds of inventive ways, right? She nailed a guy to the ceiling, she cooked a bunch of mechs' brains until their optics melted, then put them through the reanimation whatsit, she-" he looked around for someone with an obvious cause of death. "-replaced one guy's fuel pump with a leaky manual ball valve thingy that he had to hold?"

The bomb disposal bot stared.

"Did she import any organics?" Vortex asked, thinking of the eyes in his room.

"Tonight," the little bot squeaked. He coughed, and started again. "Tonight's her anniversary. Ten vorns to the nanoclick since her final subject turned on her, and the whole place blew up."

Vortex shivered, but it wasn't the small bot's words. Something brushed his rotors, and his sensors told him it was only a breeze. But a breeze couldn't wrap fingers around a tip and stroke gently to his hub.

Now _that_ was creepy.

And hot scrap, but the bomb disposal bot looked tasty. Vortex could just imagine splitting him open, laying his insides bare and licking the cracked and crackling casing of his laser core. He could hook them up, could experience each waning pulse of energy as though it was his own.

Vortex shook his rotors, and stood. "You wanna know what's good for you?" he said, and each word was an effort that went against the deepest coding of his personality component. "Don't talk to me."

The bot gaped at him, and Vortex had no choice but to flee.

The phantom touch became a whisper, suggestive and cruel in a femme's deep voice so rich and soft that Vortex could listen to it forever.

He shut himself in his room, and the words spilled on. Incitements to violence, urging him to maim and kill, telling him of chaos and the dark and a glorious new future free from the shackles of normal physical rules.

Ward Supervisor Gauge came to check on him. He sat stiff-backed on the bunk, and she perched beside him. Couldn't look at her, couldn't listen. She'd be so beautiful if only he took her insides out. But no, that was the dead talking, it wasn't him. He had to think his own thoughts. He could have her later, much later. The bomb disposal expert too, provided he didn't kill himself first. And the rest of them, one by one in noisy crowded clubs or secluded back streets. But not now.

Now, he had to control himself. His citizenship depended on it.

He stared at the floor, hands clasped in his lap, his blades so rigid they ached.

"You can tell me what Gearshift said," Gauge persisted. "It obviously had an effect on you."

Vortex shook his head. "He just..." he searched for a lie, so hard in the face of the constant tempting whispers. "He reminds me of someone I knew once. Someone who died." He looked up, and it was no effort to draw from her a sympathetic smile. "I think I'd like to be alone now."

"All right," Gauge said. She turned at the door, still smiling. "I think you've made real progress today." Then she left.

Vortex sprawled on the bunk and spun his rotors. Weak saline solution dripped on him from the eyes in the ceiling, but at least it was cool. He needed something to counteract the thrill in his circuits and the hot buzz of arousal that came with each new ghostly suggestion.

* * *

.

* * *

The living left him alone. When the screaming started, Vortex was sure they'd come, but no-one did. A siren began, footsteps clattered; a lone voice yelled that death was their only escape.

Vortex clung to the berth and tried not to think about the world outside his room. He had a life to look forward to, a universe of infinite possibility. He had skills and contacts, and the wherewithal to truly enjoy his freedom.

For a while he wondered if this was the treatment, if he was lying limp and drugged on another bunk in another place, while psy-specialists fed him a complex and ridiculous scenario to test the limits of his self control.

He didn't wake.

The whispers droned on, telling him how suitable he was, how perfect a servant of chaos he could be.

* * *

.

* * *

Vortex didn't know how he made it through the night. He kept expecting to reboot his optics only to find himself in a different room, some bot's energon dripping from his hands, dead parts nailed to the wall.

He groaned and pushed himself from the bunk. At least the whispers had stopped, and the ceiling was refreshingly empty of eyes.

Outside, the facility was in uproar. He caught the gist without even trying. Gearshift had flipped and stabbed an orderly, another mech had slit his own energon lines and bled out before anyone could help him. A small group had experienced simultaneous hallucinations and had rioted against staff.

But it was over now. Even the dead seemed to have got bored and had checked themselves out.

Vortex sighed, and found himself a seat in the centre of the rec room. He powered up a game of Strategic Defence and watched the holograms flicker. He felt as though he'd passed a test, as though in some weird way he'd earnt his ticket out of there.

He still had the therapists to please, but his mind was clear, his frame again under control. All that stood between him and the civilian life he had so richly deserved was a short period of creative lying.

That could even be fun.


End file.
